Rate WotC as a company

[Arnwyn]

I'm not sure how to vote.

Where on the given scale would my vote be if: "I no longer purchase product from WotC and am apathetic to the company's future"?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I'm not sure how to vote.

Where on the given scale would my vote be if: "I no longer purchase product from WotC and am apathetic to the company's future"?

Around 2, I think. You don't hate it or are dissatisfied about it, which would speak for 1 or 0. But neither do you like anything particular about them and feel interested in what they do, so you can't really give them anything higher...

 

[Halivar]

5.

I don't want to play D&D: The Video Game, so DDI can go jump in a lake.

I didn't purchase 3.x character sheets, and I won't purchase 4E character sheets. Complete ambivalence from me on this.

I have yet to see 3rd party content that is not (IMO) complete crap (exception: Immortal's Handbook... that was impressive), therefore I don't give a hoot about the GSL. I will note, however, that WotC still has the single-most generous usage terms among any of the big players in the RPG industry (3PP's are not in this group), so they still get a happy-feely point boost from me.

4E rocks. 3.5E rocked. 3rd rocked before that. I have railed on individual books from them of inestimable worthlessness (Planar Handbook, I'm looking at you), but at the end of the day, it is my decision whether or not to purchase... so I don't. The books I do purchase are awesome and wonderful.

WotC gets a 5. They don't get a 6 because I can't make fun of half-elves enymore... I hates it when someone moots one of my running gags.

 

[carmachu]

They geta 2 from me. Putting aside the whether I like or not like 4e:

1)PR/Advertising of 4e:
was terrible. They seemed to put down things that went before and players that didnt want to move along. They just seemed to step in it PR wise and almost every turn. Others have pointed out the faults here.

2)Cancel Dungeon/Dragon
And how it was handled. The online content has not been up to par. The advetures havent been good, full of errors. And the "SOmething really cool is coming to replace it" leads to the next point.

3)DDI/Gleemax:
No matter what some of you say, they advertised and lead us to believe that it would be around for the roll out. As pointed out, its advertised in the freaking 4e books. And Gleemax has been awful. I expect Enworld and some sites to have occassionaly outages, but Wotc's has been almost regularly irregular. Navigation on Gleemax, which is still Alpha at this point, is the worst I have had to do.

4)GSL
Was pretty much a straw that broke the camels back. Wotc has NO track record of writing good advetures. RHoD and RtTEE were exceptions, not rules. Third parties of all sorts had great quality of work in them, whther its Paizo, Necro or even Goodman, all of them are better than WotC was writing and Dungeon's online offerings show it. GSL's goal of quality isnt going to live up to its hype: the ones with quality are going to stay, the fly-by-nights are going to produce more crap.

 

[MacMathan]

For me right now the areas they need to improve in would be:

1.) Editing
2.) Production Values, paper, how modules are presented.
3.) Lack of DDI so far.

Overall I give them a 3 right now.

 

[Hussar]

The character visualizer is where you make custom minis for PCs. The visualizer is part of the core package, so you do not have to pay for custom minis that are created with it.

Oh really? That's cool. I didn't know that. I thought the visualizer just gave you a pretty portrait picture of your charry.

Didn't realize that it would do a VTT 3d mini for you too.

Hrm, how hard would it be to port character visualizer minis en mass? I mean, so long as you are using human/humanoids in armor, you could customize minis pretty well all day long.

 

[SavageRobby]

The character visualizer is where you make custom minis for PCs. The visualizer is part of the core package, so you do not have to pay for custom minis that are created with it.

Really? The visualizer is out? And the cost structure has been formally published? Or is this just speculation, based on something WotC has said about their latest vaporware?

 

[Hussar]

Really? The visualizer is out? And the cost structure has been formally published? Or is this just speculation, based on something WotC has said about their latest vaporware?

One month is enough to declare something vaporware?

But, since you asked:

Once you've created your character, you can save it to our server (and share it with your friends), save it on your local drive, print it, or turn it into a 3D miniature on the D&D Game Table. You can also link it to a D&D character sheet created using the D&D Character Builder.

Is the DDI late? Yup.

But, we've got the D&D Compendium up already, Dungeon and Dragon are ticking along (with some extremely gross graphics in Dungeon), Gleemax is up and stumbling along. So, what are we missing? We're missing the VTT, the Visualizer and the Dungeon Builder.

So, we've got about half of what they promised on time. They're a bit late on the other half. But vaporware?

Jeez, what do you guys think of the Conan MMORPG?

 

[SavageRobby]

Is the DDI late? Yup.

But, we've got the D&D Compendium up already, Dungeon and Dragon are ticking along (with some extremely gross graphics in Dungeon), Gleemax is up and stumbling along. So, what are we missing? We're missing the VTT, the Visualizer and the Dungeon Builder.

So, we've got about half of what they promised on time. They're a bit late on the other half. But vaporware?

You have a few crappy products, and mainly the easy ones, mind you - a basic CMS and a searchable database, and the least easy one (Gleemax) is highly buggy, and feature-lite. In fact, it reminds me a whole lot of the little CD that came in the 3x PHB. You wanna use that as the capstone of your argument? Weak.


Here, have a tricycle. Its going to be a Porsche someday. Really.

Jeez, what do you guys think of the Conan MMORPG?

Dunno. Don't play MMORGs. Not sure what relevance that has to this either, unless you're trying to say, "Look, someone else sucks worse than WotC". And THAT sure is a compelling argument.




Note: if their DDI gets released sometime, say, before Gencon 2009 (and it works with all advertised features - a key element), I will gladly, and publicly say in big letters, "I was wrong". (And heck, I might even use it - I'd love to see a digital product that does everything they've touted.) Until then, though, I'll consider the DDI vaporware.

 

[wayne62682]

You have a few crappy products, and mainly the easy ones, mind you - a basic CMS and a searchable database, and the least easy one (Gleemax) is highly buggy, and feature-lite.

This is the big thing. the Rules Compendium is trivially easy as it's just a text search against a database (it probably took longer to add all the relevant text to the database than to write up that "program"). Gleemax should be relatively easy as well, since all it is is a blogging engine (and a poor one at that) and some CMS type features. Nothing that's difficult for a good programmer (I maintain that the heart of Gleemax's issues is the buggy forum integration).

The real stuff is nowhere to be found, not even a semi-working pre-alpha Milestone 1 release, except for some mockups and a lot of hot air from WotC about how great it will be when it's finally released.